A Michigan based pastor-author is stirring up a heated debate about hell among his fellow American evangelicals, says Martin Marty. In a curious way it shows that evangelicalism's theology as well as its politics can still attract a response from wider, often baffled, publics.

The biblical theme of judgement confronts us with some tough issues, says Simon Barrow. But rightly understood it is about liberation not vindictiveness, and a reorientation which is economic as much as spiritual, political as much as religious.